'Beautiful white snow, Ben?'
She was looking at him eagerly, earnestly. Little though he knew it, this rough, illiterate sailor-boy was showing her glimpses of a new world, which to her young poetic imagination must be all a kind of fairyland.
He cast one glance at the sweet face beside him, then hitched himself more firmly on to the belaying-pin and swayed about for a moment in evident shyness.
'Beautiful white snow, Ben, boy. It must be like Elfinland.'
'Never been there myself, missie—to Helfinland I means, though I've 'eard speak o' it. Ye lands from a ship in a boat like, an' as ye gets nearer an' nearer to the pack-edge o' the big drearisome floes the sea hall around yer gets blacker an' blacker till it's just like ink w'en it laps an' laps ag'in' the rainbow ribbon o' icy shore.'
'But it isn't really black, Ben? Don't say it's really black, Ben—the water, I mean.'
'Oh no, missie, it is clear as dew on a rose-leaf, an' it trickles from the oar-blades like diamonds in the sun. Then there is the sky, as blue an' clear it is, just like the 'eaven th' ould pa'son speaks about, only brighter. An' there's the birds—they's beautiful too, 'specially the snow-birds that come so close ye can look into their clear, red eyes, an' could almost shake their cold feet.
'An' w'en ye does land an' goes wanderin' hall by yerself away over the 'ard, crisp snow, ye mebbe meets a bear; but the bright sun's in 'is black eyes, an' 'e just looks at ye an' goes on, for there be seals to catch, an' bladders an' wallies,[E] an' 'e don't want to eat no hooman bein' s'long's 'e can get wallies. But ye goes on an' on.'
'All by yourself, Ben, of course.'
'Well, if ye likes to put it that way. On an' on over sparklin' snow, with the black sea away somew'ere behind, ye don't seem to ken nor care 'ow far, 'cause hevery breath ye breathes is liquid life, an' ye'd raither not look back. There ye sits ye down on a 'ummock an' startles now to find the sea 'as gone. That's the wu'st o' walkin' on the hice, ye walk so far an' never gets tired. Ye doesn't min' bein' alone at fust, but after hours it begins to pall on ye, for the silence is fearsome, an', like the cold, creeps up about the 'eart; the sun won't speak to ye, the snow won't talk, an' the birds 'as flown away.'